Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeier, dead! Steinbrenner?
Dead as a doornail. Here’s a true story about that article. When I loaded up the baseball news today, I was on a mobile connection, and didn’t have a ton of bandwidth or rendering power, so it took a while for the complicated header to load, and all I saw was the subhed, which started with "George Steinbrenner poured his heart into making the Yankees winners." And I’m thinking, oh shit, it’s All-Star Day, isn’t it. They have nothing better to write than a big sloppy handjob article. And then the next line is "And that heart finally gave out at 80." My reactions, in order:
1) What
2) Holy shit that’s awful. Awful writing.
3) Wait, Steinbrenner was only 80?
According to Dave, it reminded him of Darth Vader’s death, because it’s pretty awesome in a sense, but then you’re kind of sad to be losing one of the all-time great villains. I can see that, but, frankly, Steinbrenner stopped being an all-time great villain ten years ago or so, when he started getting really senile. I can’t get excited about it, because, hey, even I’m not a big enough asshole to cheer on the death of a doddering old man who needs two attendants to get through the national anthem.
I guess Dave’s reaction is probably pretty much what I’ll be thinking when Ozzie Guillen finally mercifully catches his lunch; sort of a combination of relief and nostalgia.
To be fair, I was pretty excited a few years ago when Hank Steinbrenner took over the ownership duties of the Yankees, because as a Red Sox fan, it had become too awkward to hate on George anymore because he was pretty much gone in the head by that point. It’s pretty hard to work up a decent hate for a senile old man.
And anyway, I sort of thought George had died already, anyway. When I found out this morning that he had died, I was like “What, again?”
Comment by Dave | 13 July 2010
That’s the exact same reaction I had in 2001 when I was told that terrorists blew up the World Trade Center. That’s even exactly what I said.
I’m a bad man.
Comment by Darien | 14 July 2010